


An Imperfection of the Will

by ineptshieldmaid, Trojie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Armor Kink, Asceticism, Blood, Blood and Injury, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dominant Female Character, Dubious Consent, F/M, Face Slapping, Masochism, Orgasm Denial, Shame, Undernegotiated Kink, background sexual abuse of a teenager of unspecified age, glorious lack of p-i-anything, improper care of injuries, nothing about this is safe or sane and the consent part is highly dubious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:53:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5929164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phasma is not afraid of Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren has issues with self-control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Imperfection of the Will

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I, Inept, usually like to give comprehensive warnings and explanations, but this has little justification beyond "Trojie and I saw an idea and raced each other to the bottom" (Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren is the bottom). Behold the additional tags. If you have reason to be cautious around that kind of stuff, err on the side of caution or get someone else to vet it for you. Dead dove, do not eat.

Kylo Ren turned around abruptly, knocking something off the nearest console and slamming his hand down on it. He was shouting, not paying much attention to what he was saying: this was a fairly small matter, something he _could_ solve calmly enough. But that would require that he focus, draw his consciousness back into himself, exercise control over himself before he expected control over others: all those practices Snoke had taught him (and Uncle Luke before Snoke, and perhaps that’s why of all Snoke had to teach him, Kylo Ren liked that part the least). He could do that, or he could draw his lightsaber and drink in the fear rolling off the handful of Stormtroopers in the room. They feared him, and obeyed him, and their fear was like a sharp, heady scent in his mind.

‘Troop, dismissed,’ Phasma called out, calm and collected. There wasn’t one whiff of fear rolling off her, Kylo Ren realised. Maybe she had natural shields: but no, he sensed irritation and dismay and any number of other things, but no fear. Captain Phasma was not afraid of him.

Snoke wasn’t afraid of him, but Snoke had had him at his mercy. Captain Phasma, though…

'It is not your place to take your frustrations out on my troops, Ren,' Phasma said when the troops had all left. 'You will put your weapon away now.'

'It is not your place to tell me what to do,' Kylo Ren countered. The pure, righteous thrumming of his lightsaber in his hand was not something he would set aside on someone else's word, certainly not hers. 'Or have you forgotten that you do not command the Knights of Ren? That you do not command me?'

He wished suddenly that she would give him cause to strike. Snoke, and his Uncle Luke, would have told him to be calm. But by her own rules, she had no right to dictate to him. It would be so satisfying to make her understand, truly understand, that she could never have power over him. He took a step forward, saber still in hand, but she didn't move back. She didn't even lift a finger to her blaster. She simply held, until they were almost visor-to-visor. 

‘You’re not afraid of me.’ Kylo Ren wished he hadn’t said it, as soon as it was said.

‘No.’ Phasma folded her arms and stared him down. If what he could read without probing deeply was any indicator, all she felt was irritation. Impossible. She must have some kind of training. He sheathed his saber, because it was that or cut her, and there was no satisfaction in that if she wouldn't give him cause.

The lenses on her helmet reflected his own image back at him.

‘Take off the helmet,’ he said. He put the Force behind it, without even thinking. There were rules about that, about what he could do to Snoke’s commanders - and yet, it was done.

‘I will take the helmet off,’ Phasma said, woodenly, and pressed the clasp. The helmet lifted away easily. Her expression was blank, for a second, and then his effect on her faded and her eyes narrowed, jaw jutting out. ‘Why, Kylo,’ she said, taunting, not using his full title, ‘did you think I’d be afraid of you now?’ A moment, and her voice dropped into something speculative. ‘Are you afraid of _me_? Is that why you’re wearing a mask and I’m not?’

Kylo Ren closed his eyes for a moment - she couldn’t see that, under the mask. With an effort, he brought himself back to his body, quelled the urge to invade her mind, to _make_ her fear him. He brought his hands up, and lifted the helmet off. 

‘Why would I fear you?’ he asked, deliberately calm. ‘I have power you can only dream of.’

‘Yes,’ Phasma said, simply. ‘You do.’ It didn’t anger her, not one bit.

'I'm not afraid of you,' Kylo Ren said, to rephrase, to recouch the question as a statement, because she was supposed to be the uncertain one, not him. He pulled his helmet off, to prove it. 'You are a mere commander of troops.' He carefully put the helmet down on the console behind him. 

She just looked at him, as if she was cataloguing the details of his face, as if she was making notes for her division. He didn't like it. Looks like that had too often had doubt following along on their heels - doubt in Kylo Ren's abilities, in his commitment, in his fitness for his position as Master of the Knights of Ren. As if his youth had any correlation to his strength. 

She quirked an eyebrow at him, a silent insubordination. It was too much. He slammed his armoured fist into a delicate, light-filled bank of instrumentation. There was a brief, red-hot moment of triumph, the tiny fiery sliver of satisfaction in destruction, and then she backhanded him across the face hard enough to make him stumble back, blood welling onto his tongue from a lip split on the inside. 

He caught himself before he could fall, two voices in his head in tandem saying _I deserved that_ and _how dare she_ all at once, tangled up together. 

He could have taken her down with a thought, but he shoved at her instead, wanting to send her flying across the floor like he had with the other children when he was small. She took the blow like a rock and slammed right back into him: it was the first time anyone had so much as stepped into his space, outside of a lightsaber fight, for years, and he was so shocked that he went with it, let her shove him back into the console behind him.

‘I don’t care what Hux lets you get away with,’ she snarled, heavy chrome-plated hands pinning his arms down at his sides, ‘but if you so much as breathe on any of my equipment again, I will have you in reconditioning for a month.’ She couldn't. He wasn't under her command. But she didn’t seem like she was mouthing off. She seemed serious. As if she could - as if she _would -_

Kylo Ren did the first thing he could think of - it’d worked on girls before, at the Jedi school - and lunged forward, as far as he could with her hands holding him down, and kissed her. Hard. With teeth.

She let him, for a second, then shoved a knee up between his legs. He shrank back, reflexively, but she didn’t have enough force or the right angle to hurt him. At first he thought she had poor aim, and then he revised that to perfect control: she used her leg to lever him off balance, pushing his right thigh out along the console and leaning all her weight onto it, so he was pinned at three points instead of two. He didn't fling her away, although he could have.

‘You think you’re the first man to try that on me?’ Phasma growled, leaning heavily into him with hands and legs but holding her chrome-plated chest clear of his torso. ‘You don’t want to know what I did to the last one.’

Kylo Ren felt the intense, ferocious power radiating off her, though, and he did. He did want to know. And he wanted to know how she had felt afterwards. He wanted to know how someone so mundane could hold him as if his power meant nothing, as if she actually had the advantage.

His hips jerked up without his consent, as wilful as his pounding heart. There was no give in her chromed armour, but it was enough to push against that uncompromising metal. He hissed through his teeth, overwhelmed by the physical sensation of that touch, of her gauntlets on his wrists, and her ice-cold wrath permeating the air between them. 

'You're a spoiled child,' she said flatly. 'A pathetic boy who has always got his way. You will not get your way with me, Kylo. And your silly magic tricks don't frighten me.'

'That doesn't mean they won't work on you,' he pointed out. 

She smirked, though, and leaned her weight down on him more fully. It made him dizzy with something he didn't fully understand. 'You won't.'

And he didn't. 

'I don't like the Force,' she said, almost conversationally. 'It's divisive. It makes us weak. People who have it play games with it, people who lack it are jealous. It upends order and progress.'

'Are you jealous of me, Phasma?' Kylo Ren said, fingers twitching towards the hilt of his lightsaber. She was so close, even freeing the blade would do her damage. Her weight would fall on him fully, then. 'I know you're ambitious. Driven. Knowing the ways of the Force could make you great -'

She laid one gauntleted finger on his lips. 'It hasn't made you great,' she said. He flexed the fingers on his left arm, which she’d freed in order to touch his lips, and waited. 'As far as I can see, all it's done is made you Snoke's minion. You have nothing - no comrades, no duty to fulfill, no purpose except tantrums and mystic nonsense. Oh, _Kylo_ ,' she sing-songed, dragging the name out, as he took a breath, shaky with rage, to tell her exactly how wrong she was. 'Are you jealous of _me_?'

Rather than answer that, he grabbed her by the hair at the back of her neck and pulled back; she gave a gratifying little gasp of shock, but she was too well-trained to waste time trying to break his hold. Instead she let him open up the space between them, and used it to backhand him sharp across the face again.

The chinks in her gauntlets caught on his lip, and he tasted blood. Phasma planted her free hand square on his shoulder and brought her full bodyweight down on him, arms and knee and torso at once. Kylo Ren tightened the grip he had in her hair, yanking savagely. Still he couldn't sense fear from her, as if the leverage he had on her meant nothing. She pulled her hips back, sliding her knee higher between his thighs. Not high enough. He dug his fingers into her scalp and dragged at it, but she barely moved an inch. There was no more pressure, not where he wanted it. 

'I see,' she said, and reached back to wrench his hand from her hair. Back where they started, a stalemate, until she forced his wrists together and wrapped one large armoured hand around them. 'Do you enjoy pain, Kylo? Or is it simply that you lack someone to pay attention to you?' She hit him across the cheek again, and this time the plate across her knuckles stung and cut across his cheek. His cock jerked in his trousers. 'No discipline,' she said softly. Ominously. 

'Discipline is for footsoldiers,' he told her, spitting blood. 'I have no need to be led by the nose.'

He tried to pull free and found that he couldn't. The knee between his thighs slid higher as she bent him back harder, more of her weight keeping him strung tight in the position she was twisting him into. The power in her body was immense. 

'I disagree,' she said. 'You have already been much more reasonable in the two minutes since I've taken you in hand. I almost think I like you like this.' She ground her knee up, a knowing look in her eye. 'Is that really all it takes? It isn't your nose you're being led by, boy.'

'I -'

She slapped him, this time with the open palm of her gauntlet, and then took him by the jaw, thumbing at his lower lip as if inspecting the damage she'd done. 'No. My troops do not answer me back.'

‘Not your-’ he tried, and shut his mouth sharply on the groan that threatened to escape as she dug chrome fingertips into the soft meat at the hinge of his jaw.

‘Aren’t you?’ She held his face still, rock-solid, and shifted the weight of her knee back a little. He writhed, pushing up after her. ‘I think you belong to anyone who’ll come and take you.’

Kylo Ren reached for the power he’d need to shove her off. It was there, it was always there, but for the first time since - well, the first time in a long time, his body was broadcasting louder demands than the power in his mind. His lip stung. His jaw ached. His breath heaved in his chest. Phasma’s weight bore down on his crossed wrists and his cock ached with too little and too much all at once. Everything between those points was strung out, running hot and cold. He shuddered, his stomach flip-flopping. He couldn’t even read the simplest empathic sense off the top of Phasma’s mind, like this, not when all his attention was on her hands and her weight on top of him. 

'Get on your knees,' she said softly. He slid down as if his hamstrings had been cut. 

Her thumb was still hooked in his lower lip, a heavy weight where his mouth was throbbing and swollen. Her hand still cradled his jaw almost gently, but without letting him have even the illusion that she would let him pull away. 'Hands behind your back.' And he did it, mind blank and body starving for instruction.

'How are you - how are you doing this?' he asked, bewildered. He hadn't _obeyed_ like this, without resisting, in years - or maybe ever. Force-sensitivity made for wilful children, and he had been precociously sensitive.

'What happened to your great powers, hmmm?' Phasma asked instead of answering. 'What do you want more, Kylo? Power, or pleasure? Or pain?' And she slapped him again. She had enough leverage now that she knocked the breath from him, and the breadth of her palm covered his whole cheek with flaming heat. He cried out in shame as much as pain, and the weird tang and taste of chrome filled his senses as she stuffed her fingers in his mouth. 'Be quiet, take what you're given, and be satisfied with it,' she growled. 

His cock was leaking, smearing slickness on the inside of his pants, under no more influence than the weight of his robes as he rocked under each slap. Kylo Ren shuddered. Every time she landed a blow, the sting of it was more arousing than any of the fumbling touches he'd used on himself when he was younger. And she rained blow after blow down on him, holding him still, making him take it, except that it didn't take long for him to stop needing her to _make_ him. 

‘Look at you,’ she said, in the pause between one slap and the next. ‘Practically gagging for anything you can get.’ Her fingers pressed down on his tongue, and he sucked reflexively at them. Something that wasn’t quite surprise flickered over her face, and the phrase _gagging for it_ echoed back at him in his own mind. He leaned forward, straining to get her fingers as deep into him as he could, ignoring the unwieldy weight of the gauntlet plates and the taste of blood on his tongue as they cut into him.

He didn’t get the kind of reaction out of her that he was used to, but the thumb on his jaw tightened a little.

‘Tell me you’re getting off on this,’ she said, pulling her fingers back. He whined, leaning forward again, and she slapped him, hard, with the other hand. ‘Answer me, Kylo Ren. Yes or no.’

He ached. He wanted. He didn’t want to have to speak. His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel it in his fingertips, in his lungs and gut. His awareness of the world around him, the feel of the Force in everything, was narrowed to the tightness of his own shivering skin and the light glancing off her armour. _He couldn't read her_ , not right now. All he had was the bright pain of the bruises she was leaving, and the metal taste of his own blood, and both were fading the longer she denied him her touch.

Another blow, backhanded this time. ‘Answer me. You’re hard.’

‘Yes.’ He stared up mulishly, tonguing his cuts, probing for more sensation. 

Slap. He wondered wildly if he could reach orgasm from pain, if that was even possible. 

‘Yes, what?’

‘Yes ma’am.’

Slap. ‘Try again.’

‘Yes, Captain.’ The words came out thickly, around his swollen and lacerated tongue, and the taste of blood in his mouth made him gag. He desperately wanted to suck on her cold, metal-sheathed fingers again, as if the chilly chrome would ease the swelling and the pain. He wanted her to touch him in other places as well: her heavy, implacable hands to pin him down at the hips, or to push his thighs apart and leave him exposed. He wanted to feel her slide her armoured hand through the wet mess he was leaking into his pants. 

He wanted it, so badly he could taste it, but it was as if Phasma could hear his thoughts and was set to deny him. She gazed down at him for a moment, then snapped the clasp on one of her gauntlets. With her bare hand - large, pale, calloused - she nudged his mouth open, and turned his chin to one side.

‘Spit,’ she commanded. He spat, shuddered, and spat blood onto the floor again. Phasma held his chin, impassive, until he was done, and then turned his face back toward her. 

He stared at her mouth, the curve of her neck as it disappeared behind her breastplate. Somehow he could not bring himself to look her in the eye, but he held still as she examined her handiwork. 

She stepped forward, the toe of her boot nudging up against his calf just behind his folded knee. Not touching his cock. He could, if he shifted - he could slide forward and… Her fingers tightened on his jaw.

‘You’re going to come in your pants,’ she said. She didn’t wait for him to answer, shoved two fingers back into his mouth, and yanked his hair sharply with her other hand. His hands were free now, but he couldn’t bring himself to move them. ‘You’re going to come in your pants like a horny child, on my control room floor.’ He was, he was going to, as soon as she shifted her boot or let him move. He was going to come all over himself and he was going to like it.

‘Yes, Captain,’ he muttered, around her fingers. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth.

‘Don’t.’

Kylo Ren hadn’t thought, until then, that he was at risk of coming without any more friction at all, but suddenly he was. Phasma slapped him again, a rain of them, hard and fast, and he was seeing stars and his cock ached and the need built up in his belly and he was going to come without any touch at all, not even a boot. Just the taste of blood and the terrible flying-falling feeling of no control. Both his hands dropped from above his head, hovering over his thighs, so close - and yet he looked up at her for permission.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Phasma said, pressing down on his calf with her toes. Somewhere, he found the self-control, balled his hands up into fists, and forced himself back from the edge. 

Her ability to read him was flawless. ‘Good,’ she said, pulling her fingers out of his mouth entirely. Her thumb brushed the edge of his jaw in the faintest of rewards. 

'Do you want to know a secret, Kylo?' she asked. He nodded, afraid that speaking or moving would tip him over again. He couldn't trust himself. If he opened his mouth he might resplit the cuts in his lips, and that might …

'The soldiers I send to reconditioning don't fight me,' she said. 

'Because they know they need it. Sheep need their shepherd,' he said, the words coming thickly around the mess she'd made of his mouth. 

Her eyes were coolly amused when he finally looked up enough to meet them. 'Because they want to please me. More than they want to please themselves.'

‘What,’ he asked, and his sense of self was coming back again, he had to fight to get the words out, ‘what do you want me to do?’

‘I _want_ you to stop harassing my troops and breaking my equipment,’ Phasma said, cold and stern.

Kylo Ren swallowed, hard. Some part of his brain remembered that it wasn’t her place; that she and her troops alike belonged to Supreme Leader Snoke. _As did he_ , and the thought made him flush hot with shame, and snarl up at Phasma.

‘If your troops were better fit for -’ he began, and Phasma slapped him across the face again, hard and fast when he wasn’t expecting it. His whole body sang with tension and need; he gagged and spat more blood all over the floor (careful, still, not to sully her boots). 

‘Please,’ he said, the word raw and unaccustomed on his tongue, worse than the iron taste of his injuries. ‘What… what can I do?’

‘To please me? Phasma asked. ‘I already told you that.’

His face burned and his cock ached. ‘What about…’ He made a useless gesture with one hand. Phasma looked down, at his robes dishevelled and his gloved hands shaking on his thighs and the swollen bulge in his trousers.

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘Go back to your quarters and deal with it yourself.’

A deep shudder ran through him. ‘Deal with it myself.’

Phasma raised one eyebrow. ‘Yes. If you call up some underling to deal with it for you, _I will know_.’ 

‘I don’t-’ Kylo Ren squeezed his eyes shut suddenly, hot shame threatening to turn to tears. The same tears he had been unable to hide from the Supreme Leader, when… well, when he had had less self-control. 

He lined up sharp retorts: how would she know, she has no power over the Force to monitor his thoughts or actions. What power has she to do anything against him if he did? And behind that, the low-voiced threat from long ago: _if you touch yourself when you are away from me, Initiate, I will know, and you will suffer for it_.

‘You don’t what?’ Phasma asked. Some of the steel had gone out of her voice, replaced with something almost like curiosity. ‘You don’t foist yourself on those weaker than you, Kylo Ren? You only take pleasure in terrifying them and putting them into disorder?’

‘I do not,’ he grit out, ‘expend energy on physical gratification. The Force demands total adherence, Phasma. We cannot afford to be distracted.’

‘You’re distracted now,’ she pointed out, bending a little, bringing their faces closer together.

‘Yes,’ he said. There was no point denying it. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t read his mind: his body betrayed him more easily.

‘Go to your quarters, Kylo Ren,’ she said. She slid chrome fingers over his cheek. ‘Go to your quarters, and touch yourself. Think about this -’ the metal dragged over his bruised lips, ‘when you do.’

* * *

He had wondered, during his training as an Initiate, why Snoke had singled him out. Why it was him, always, that had the extra lessons that kept him up later at night than all the others. He'd thought - Snoke had _said_ \- that it was because he was so far ahead of the others, so strong at such a young age, that he'd needed the extra tuition to keep him firing along that trajectory. 

Clearly he had misunderstood. Whatever it was Snoke had seen in him that required correction, Phasma had seen it too. He was weak, flawed at the core. That was why he still could not resist the pull of the Light. 

His grandfather's mangled helmet stared at him accusingly, and he clenched his fists. No. He could root out the rot. He would remember Supreme Leader Snoke's teaching, he would even take the wretched corrections Phasma had tried to dole out to him, and he would learn from them, bitter as the lesson might be. He would be devoted to the Force, to the directives of the Dark Side. He would be above the commands of anything external. 

He would _do better_. 

He did not call for ice or bacta cream. He endured nausea and the slowly-diminishing taste of blood. He let his mouth swell and his face bruise. For several days, he consumed nothing but liquids. At night, he dug his fingernails into his thighs and shuddered when it stung, and told himself that pain was the opposite of pleasure. He would not do what she'd ordered. He wouldn't touch himself. During the day, he meditated, and when that did not help (the opposite of helping, in fact, and he hadn’t suffered from… distractions of that sort while meditating since he was a boy), he dedicated extra time to physical training. 

He did not see Phasma for several days.

He did see Hux, which should not have been a problem. Hux was unavoidable. Hux was a good strategist and loyal to the First Order. Hux had the favour of Supreme Leader Snoke. Hux was not force-sensitive. Hux could not see beneath Kylo Ren’s helmet and know that his lips were swollen with healing cuts and his face purpling with the bruises Phasma had left on him. 

There was, in short, no reason why Kylo Ren should feel abashed in front of General Hux, and yet. Hux had a shrewd gaze, and Hux stood next to him as they presented themselves to Supreme Leader Snoke. Kylo Ren had never noticed this before, but in addition to sensing the fear and awe in Hux’s mind, he could smell Hux’s body when they stood like this. Hux used some kind of cologne, and Kylo Ren could smell it on him, mixed with fear-sweat and excitement.

Hux was not force-sensitive but Hux had a nose, like everyone else. Hux, Kylo Ren realised, could probably smell him. Did he smell of fear, to Hux? He was afraid of no one, but he was afraid of Supreme Leader Snoke. Especially now, when he had something to hide. He had washed, he had burned his sheets, and yet he could not separate the memory from the actual sensations: the damp, tacky mess on his groin when he awoke, the faint salty smell of his own discharge, and the tangy, clammy sleep-sweat that turned swiftly to hot, prickling shame. 

He had showered, and revisited old lessons about involuntary fluxes and the lack of blame to be apportioned where no volition was present. It didn’t help. The flaw lay in the imperfection of the will, ergo, the will could be perfected. And he, Kylo Ren, had the greatest potential - potential to power, to perfection, and yes, to perversion - of any Force user alive.

 _You lack discipline_. Phasma had said it. Years ago, Snoke had said it. And before Snoke… well, those before Snoke had been wrong in many ways, but they too had said it. He lacked discipline.

He did not touch himself, but he lacked the discipline not to _think_ , not to want, not to remember. He did not touch his cock, no, but he rapidly developed an unhealthy, undisciplined fixation with other kinds of touch. He wore leather gloves: nothing like Phasma’s gauntlets, not as hard or as cold, but still a sheath over skin. Many times a day, he had to touch his own skin with them: taking his helmet on and off, adjusting his robes. He found himself lingering in those moments. Seeking out additional opportunities: dressing and undressing. Combing through his hair. Stroking his own face, his chest, his shoulders.

Once, in a terrible lapse of control, he shoved his own fingers into his mouth and _licked_ them. He licked his own gloved fingers from base to tip and back again, whimpering and hard and wanting, curled into a trembling curve on the floor of his own quarters.

He had not wanted anything like this since Supreme Leader Snoke had first shown him the power of the Dark. He had known pleasure with the Supreme Leader, both physical gratification and the heady, validating knowledge that he had earned the Supreme Leader’s favour. But neither of those were anything compared to the power he had desired and Snoke had offered to him: the power of anger and fear, the power he had learned to draw from others as well as from within himself.

Phasma had very little to offer him, compared to the power of the Dark side of the Force. And yet. He wanted.

* * *

If he did not do as Phasma had ordered and touch himself, he also did not do as she had ordered and leave her troops alone. In fact, he began to wonder if she was deliberately assigning the most incompetent of Stormtroopers to duties that brought them into his path, with the specific aim of infuriating him.

The greater concern to him, though, was that Phasma's troops were just that. _Phasma's_ troops. They did not appear to recognise the hierarchy of the First Order, and Kylo Ren was beginning to harbour doubts that, in the event of a battle, they would behave correctly. Phasma was an intermediary. Loyalty and obedience were supposed to be to the Order and to Supreme Leader Snoke or his representative; that was, Kylo Ren himself.

Kylo Ren had undertaken his own 'reconditioning' of approximately fifteen incompetent Stormtroopers before Phasma's insubordination apparently could take no more, and she confronted him. 

'Is it your intention to render this base inoperational through lack of personnel?' she asked him coolly.

'There are thousands of troops on Starkiller Base,' he replied. 'If I make examples of a small number, perhaps the others will attend to their duties better.'

'My troops are exemplary.'

'Exemplary troops would do as they were told by a ranking officer.'

Phasma's helmet tilted just a fraction, as if she were questioning him. Then she stepped into his space and he had to force himself to hold his ground. He realised, appallingly late, that yet again, she had managed to empty the room around him and that they were alone. He should not be alone with Phasma. It lead to weakness. 

'Your behaviour continues to be childish, I see,' she said. 'I can only assume that you were disobedient, and are still frustrated. If you can't obey orders yourself, Kylo, how can you expect others to follow your directives?' She shook her head. 'Force users. So erratic. Take off your helmet.'

There was absolutely no compulsion behind the command, because she couldn't put any there. And yet Kylo Ren did as he was told. 

She took hold of his chin and moved his head around, inspecting him as a technician would a malfunctioning droid. 'These have bruised badly,' she said. 'An unacceptable state of affairs, for a _ranking officer _-' and she put a great deal of sarcasm into those two words, '- to be at less than fighting fitness.'__

__'They're a reminder to me,' he said, glaring at her, or at least at her helmet. They were almost perfectly of a height. Not many people were tall enough to stare down Kylo Ren._ _

__'Of what?'_ _

__'To be stronger.'_ _

__She shook her head at him slowly, and he had the distinct feeling she was laughing at him. He flushed hot, and couldn't decide if it was from anger or shame, or something worse. 'Is it working?' she asked._ _

__'I -'_ _

__'I thought so.' Her plated hand tightened, and dropped lower, threatening to cut off his breath. 'I suppose I'll have to supervise you through proper routines. A good weapon,' she growled at him, giving him a little shake, 'should not be left to rust. It's wasteful. Do you want to be wasteful, Kylo? Do you think that is an appropriate way to treat something you might have to rely on in battle?'_ _

__'No,' he said, thickly. His larynx worked under her grip. She wasn't making him fight for air, but she left him in no doubt that if warranted, she would have no trouble crushing his windpipe._ _

__'Much as I dislike the idea, I may be forced to rely on you,' she said, and let go of him. He resisted the urge to put a hand to his throat, or to cough_ _

__There was a sound that could well have been a sigh. 'You will follow me to the infirmary,' she said. 'Put your helmet back on.'_ _

__He did as he was told, eager and trying to hide it, as he tried to hide the unbidden stiffening of his cock in his trousers as he walked. She would put her hands on him again. She would compel him to do things in that way she had, as if there was no possible universe in which he would disobey. And she would hurt him if he tried._ _

__Maintaining an even stride was problematic. Phasma gave no indication that she noticed or cared._ _

__Once the infirmary doors were safely shut and the droid who had been stationed there dismissed, Phasma turned, and gestured at the examination table. 'Sit,' she said. 'And remove your helmet.' Briskly, she undid the hidden clasps on her gauntlets, and laid them aside. Her hands were large (he knew that), broad but long-fingered, with the nails neatly trimmed._ _

__'Do you have medical training?' Kylo Ren asked. It appeared that she intended to dress his injuries herself, which seemed very irregular. That was the function of the droid._ _

__'Enough for this,' she said, contriving to indicate that dealing with 'this' didn't warrant much training. 'Hold still.'_ _

__Kylo Ren held himself stationary, barely breathed, while she swabbed and dabbed bacta cream cuts and scrapes, and applied something cooling to the worst sore spots, such as the swollen place on his lip where he had not been able to stop worrying at the flesh. The taste of it was bitter, astringent. Phasma had not removed her helmet. He could see himself reflected in it, which was disconcerting. He looked away, and flinched when that caused Phasma to slip and pull at a cut._ _

__It didn't take long to fix up the damage to his face. He found himself wishing that he had behaved worse, and been disciplined more strictly._ _

__'That's the first task,' Phasma said, straightening up and putting away the medical supplies. 'Do you see how easy that was? It would have been a simple matter for you to attend to it yourself, if you weren't wilful and foolish.'_ _

__A retort froze on the tip of his tongue, because she was not in command of him and she had no place to say things like this to him, and yet, she was right._ _

__'The second task ought to be no more difficult,' she said. 'And yet. I have doubts about your performance.'_ _

__Kylo Ren blushed. Her tone of voice almost demanded it._ _

__'Oh, so you do know what I mean.' Phasma was laughing at him again, he could tell. All he seemed to be able to do about it was to fidget and turn crimson. 'And here I was thinking that they had trained all knowledge of sex out of you.'_ _

__'I know what sex is,' Kylo Ren said, stung. 'I'm not an infant.'_ _

__Phasma put a finger to his chin, tilted his head up. 'So you say. But are you a virgin?'_ _

__No. The Supreme Leader had taken care of that. 'Purity is in the mind,' he said instead, not sure if he was avoiding the question because it was a foolish question (it was - who cared if he'd had sexual connection with another person? What, exactly, was that relevant to?) or because he did not want to tell her who had relieved him of that distraction._ _

__'I didn't ask about your purity of thought, I asked you about your physical experience,' she said, gripping his jaw again. It hurt, but her skin was warm, and the combination made Kylo Ren's cock twitch in his pants. 'It was my understanding that Snoke does his level best to beat the practice of pleasure out of the Force-sensitive at a young age.'_ _

__'You don't approve?' he croaked. Easier to ask her opinion than to explain the ways in which the Supreme Leader conforms to the ancient Jedi traditions, and the cases in which he does not._ _

__She shook her head a little. 'I find that trying to cut parts out of people makes them less efficient soldiers. Machines need all their little gears and cogs,' she said. 'People are no different. They will malfunction if you alter them too much. So I will ask you again, Kylo - are you a virgin?'_ _

__He could have lied. He could have refused to answer. He could have left the room. 'No. The Supreme Leader,’ he swallowed, and started again: ‘The Initiates of Ren don't require that.'_ _

__Phasma's long fingers found their way to the back of Kylo Ren's skull and tightened in his hair, pulling his head back so that he couldn't help but see the distortion of his own expression in her helmet again, and not look away. He got the distinct feeling that this time she was looking him in the eye, looking for something there. 'Let me guess, then,' she said. 'You didn't deal with _that_ -' and she nodded down at his lap, '- for the same reason that you didn't deal with this.' _ _

__This time her thumb on his lip reopened a cut fully. He could taste the blood._ _

__'I told you to touch yourself,' she said, holding his head in both of her hands. 'I have no interest in fulfilling that function for you.’ Kylo Ren had not, for an instant, supposed that she would. The mere thought was altogether too humiliating, too much, too close - and yet despite that, or perhaps because of it, his cock ached and throbbed and leaked shameful sticky evidence against his pants._ _

__‘However, it seems you may need… supervision.’_ _

__Phasma left the remark hanging in the air. She continued to cradle his face, gently but not tenderly, holding him still without force or urgency. There were callouses on her palms - from strength training, he thought, unless she did that, too, in full armour. She said nothing further._ _

__Eventually, Kylo Ren spoke. ‘Yes,’ he said. Her fingers tightened a little on his jaw. ‘Yes, Captain Phasma.’_ _

__‘Take your gloves off,’ she said._ _

__The task was harder than it should have been - his hands were trembling minutely. Eventually he managed to peel the leather off his fingers, and dropped the gloves to one side._ _

__'Good,' Phasma said coolly. The praise was barely worthy of note, nothing more than an observation of his compliance in the way she said it, but it made something terrible and warm rise up in his belly. He wanted more. He put his hands on his thighs and awaited further orders._ _

__(In the back of his mind he heard Snoke's voice, reminding him that the Dark Side is for wolves, not sheep.)_ _

__Phasma's expression was unreadable, thanks to the careful design of the stormtrooper helmet, but she sounded just as calm as she would have been ordering her troops to fire when she said, 'Now open your pants.'_ _

__She was so close to him, still holding his jaw. The Supreme Leader had just watched, watched and talked. Taught lessons, philosophy of the Force, while Kylo Ren had touched himself and felt power in it. There was no power in this for him, not like this, not with her - but neither was there uncertainty. Snoke had been … easy to displease._ _

__The crisp air of the infirmary was a shock when he bared his cock to it, after the heat underneath his clothes. Phasma's metal expression didn't, couldn't change._ _

__Kylo Ren waited for the next order._ _

__'Put your hand on your cock, Kylo,' said Phasma, almost softly through the filters in the helmet. 'You will begin by showing me how you touch yourself when you are alone.'_ _

__'I do not -' Kylo Ren started, hoarsely. Phasma's fingers tightened on his jaw, and he stopped._ _

__'Very well,' she said, and now she sounded irritated. But not angry. Kylo Ren shivered, waiting for a blow that didn't come. 'I want you to go slowly,' she said. 'You will handle yourself gently until you work out what it is, exactly, that you want. Since you seem to have so much trouble with that.'_ _

__It took a long time for Kylo Ren to compel himself to move his hand. The touch of his own palm felt almost alien. He bit his lip and whimpered, the iron taste of blood sweet on his tongue. He stared down at himself, at the unfamiliar motion of his hand. The sight of his own cock was unfamiliar, too: he had ignored it as much as possible since leaving the side of the Supreme Leader._ _

__Phasma's grip shifted, one hand taking hold of him by the hair instead of the jaw, the other pressing her fingers to Kylo Ren's painful, abused lips. He had wanted this, dreamed about it in fits and snatches, and he opened to her pressure with barely any resistance. His tongue and lips worked against skin; her hands tasted faintly of sweat and bacta cream. He licked into the creases between her fingers, eyes sliding closed._ _

__'You will keep touching yourself,' she said harshly. He hadn't even realised that his hand had stopped moving. But it felt better, more natural this time, with her to concentrate on._ _

__'You're speeding up.' She sounded amused. 'You are aware that this does not stimulate me in any meaningful way?' He could hear her breathing and it barely even suggested that she was interested._ _

__He couldn't answer, obviously. But he squirmed, squeezing his hand inadvertently and bucking into it, forcing her fingers deeper down his throat. She stopped him with her other hand, grip tightening in his hair until his head was held still. He flicked his tongue up against the pad of her palm, tracing the underside of the metacarpal joint. He had very little in the way of gag reflexes, not when his mouth wasn’t filling with his own blood._ _

__‘You’re right,’ Phasma said, conversationally. ‘You’re no innocent. You’ve practiced this, haven’t you?’_ _

__He ignored the question and sucked harder, tongue and throat working against her skin at once._ _

__‘You’ve no idea what you want,’ she said, with a sharp tug on his hair. ‘But you want this, don’t you? You get off on it.’ He whined something like assent. ‘Don’t think you can earn anything more than this,’ she warned. Kylo Ren felt his hand slow on his cock, as his brain tried to process that._ _

__‘If I had a cock,’ Phasma said, leaning down toward him, ‘you’d want to suck it, wouldn’t you?’ He answered with his tongue against her skin. ‘Would you suck my clit, Kylo Ren? Like you’re sucking my fingers now? Would you lick me with one hand down your own pants?’_ _

__He shuddered. He’d never - not with a woman. But he would. Oh how he would._ _

__‘I wouldn’t let you. You don’t get to touch me, is that clear?’_ _

__Then she was pulling her fingers from his mouth, dragging against his still-bruised lips. He whimpered, unable to stop himself. She even let go of his hair, and without her hold he slumped forward._ _

__He did not stop stroking his cock, though. She had told him to do it._ _

__'Are you learning, Kylo?' she asked. 'You appear to have found a pace you enjoy.'_ _

__He was doing as she told him to. He hadn't - this wasn't his choice, no, he hadn't chosen to waste his energy on this, he wouldn't - this was what she had compelled him to do. He struggled to keep his eyes down, to keep up his pace, because his hands itched at the sudden flare of resentment and rage at her words._ _

__He wanted to _break something_. Did she not realise what this was doing to him? And yet he could. Not. Stop. _ _

__‘I need,’ he began, and stopped, overwhelmed. He needed to come. He needed her hands again. He needed a smack to the face._ _

__Phasma dug her fingers into one of the bruises on his jaw, and he bucked up into his own grip._ _

__‘You have no idea what you need,’ she said. She must be disappointed in him, and yet she sounded cold, observant. ‘You _needed_ to touch yourself this time last week. You _needed_ to take care of your own face.’ Another sharp jab at his week-old bruises. The pain ought to make him nauseous, or angry, but it made his cock jerk and small whimpers spill out of his throat._ _

__‘Please,’ he began. ‘Please, Phasma, I need to… I have no restraint, I am unworthy, I need...’ the words spilled from his mouth, all at once, the last of his will giving way._ _

__She slapped him. Not hard, just a light sting across the old bruises._ _

__‘Pull yourself together,’ she snapped. ‘I didn’t ask you to grovel. Find what remains of your dignity. Ask and _wait_.’_ _

__Kylo Ren dragged in a breath. ‘May I,’ he began. ‘May I…’ He didn’t have the words. He didn’t know what she wanted from him._ _

__‘May you what, Kylo Ren?’_ _

__‘May I _come_ ,’ he spat, and begging had been easier than that, the specificity of it worse than all the self-recriminations he could have uttered._ _

__Phasma was silent. He slowed his hand, but she hadn’t told him to stop, either. He waited until he could be sure his voice was steady._ _

__‘May I come, Captain?’_ _

__‘Permission granted,’ she said, and he bent over himself. One, two fast jerks was all it took, and he came apart, shuddering, spilling all over his pants. She rested one hand on the back of his head while he did._ _

__A few moments passed like that, and then she withdrew from him. He looked up to find she was holding out a swatch of cloth. For him to clean himself up with. Right. He took it from her, and was disproportionately grateful when she turned away. Kylo Ren swabbed himself clean and re-settled his clothing while she retrieved her gauntlets and fastened them back on. She did so slowly, giving him enough time to bring his breathing back under control._ _

__She wasn’t going to say ‘well done’, or anything of that sort, he realised, as he slid his own gloves back on. Which was _fine_. He didn’t need petty validation from her._ _

__Phasma held out his helmet to him. Kylo Ren reached for it, but she did not let go of it. They were still for a moment, the leather of his gloves brushing up against her chrome gauntlets and the weight of the helmet between them._ _

__‘I don’t believe you can be trusted to… manage yourself from here, can you, Kylo Ren?’ She might have meant his behaviour or she might have meant his libido. Kylo Ren did not answer her, but he did not look away, either._ _

__‘Let me offer you a deal,’ she said. ‘You need discipline. I will provide it.’_ _

__He nodded, dumbly, as he had nodded for Supreme Leader Snoke many years ago._ _

__‘You will leave here, and you will not touch yourself. You will not call upon others to gratify you, either. You will control yourself,’ she said, and he straightened his spine without thinking about it, responding automatically to the steel in her voice. ‘And you will come to me and you will ask my permission to gratify yourself.’_ _

__‘You think I will come to you and beg?’ Kylo Ren managed to raise one eyebrow, with a shadow of the self-possession he was used to exercising. Phasma did not quail._ _

__‘You will not beg,’ Phasma answered him, sharp and commanding. ‘You will request permission. You will not offer bribery or incentives. I will grant permission,’ she added, withdrawing one hand from the helmet between them and laying her fingers along his jaw again. ‘Or refuse it, on the basis of your conduct in other domains.’_ _

__‘And if I don’t come?’ Kylo Ren asked, and flushed hot as his brain caught up with the double entendre._ _

__‘If you do not come to me,’ Phasma said, ‘I shall come to you. And I will not be generous.’ Her fingers tightened on his jaw for a moment, just enough to make the point clear. ‘Understood?’_ _

__‘Understood,’ Kylo Ren answered. She waited. ‘Understood, Captain Phasma.’_ _

__‘Good. Then put that on,’ she relinquished his chin and the helmet at the same time, ‘and we are finished here.’_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Notes to passing medievalists, church historians and/or Jedi experts: why yes, Inept did wildly pilfer from Augustine and John Cassian. I have logical reasons for which bits, and constructed a plausible narrative of how Kylo Ren got those ideas. Eventually I'll write it up on DW and link from here.


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